Robert Frost's Poetry Flashcards
What is Robert Frosts poetry surrounding + context
Robert Frost held underlying frustration with the USA + the early 20th century + how it was playing out, there’s a lack of assurance he felt when moving to the UK to pursue his poetry, his self criticism is imbued throughout his poetry, there’s a lack of self assurance which mimics his lack of belief in himself + his poetic abilities.
He’s known for his plural settings and reframing from over complex lamagugebut utilises this simplistic language bto evoke complex philosophical theories + concepts.
State the Frost Poems
- The Runaway
- The Road not taken
- Mending wall
- Stopping In the woods on a snowy evening
- Out Out
- Mowing
What is Frosts ‘The Runaway’ centered around?
‘The Runaway’ by Robert Frost is told from the perspective of a speaker who comes upon a single young colt exhibiting fear at the sight of snow. Its an observation of a rural setting where a young horse is frightened by its first experience with snow.
As the snow falls, the horse is at a wall, seemingly ready to jump over it and flee. When the narrator + companion come into contact with the horse, the horse runs away across the pasture. The narrator explains the horse’s fear in a manner of how a child would experience this and beg a parent for explanation of the new, unfamiliar experience.
Unfortunately, there is no parent to explain this, and the horse continues to run around among the falling snowflakes in terror. The final lines of the poem convey the message of the poem, stating that someone should come and soothe the young horse.
State the key poetic divides Frost utilises in ‘The Runaway’
Frost chooses to structure The Runaway with;
- A varied and scattered rhyme scheme which contains three couplets + a number of moments of alternate rhyme.
- Personification
- Repetition
- Anaphora
- Emotive language
- Embedded pathetic fallacy
What is Frosts The Road not taken centred around?
The road not taken accounts the speakers conflicting introspection over the two paths he could have chosen + wether or not he regrets his choices. Individualism is presented throughout as it progresses however we are consistently uncertain if hes questioning it or thinking of the individual who is.
There’s a role of uncertainty to everything we do, whilst we can use knowledge to deduce which pathway is best, we can never be absolutely sure and ultimately will never know about the road not taken.
The poem makes clear that every choice involves the loss of opportunity and that choices are painful because they must be made with incomplete information.
State the key poetic divides Frost utilises in ‘The Road not taken’
The road not taken consists of;
- Loose iambic pentameter which allows for a steady rhythm of walking, perhaps missing the frequent movement + experience of the speaker.
- Anaphora
- Alliteration
- Enjambement
- Extended metaphor
- Metonymy
- Symbolism
- Repetition
The poem ends with a Paradox.
What is Frosts Mending wall centred around?
A stone wall separates the speaker’s property from his neighbour’s. In spring, the two meet to walk the wall and jointly make repairs.
The speaker sees no reason for the wall to be kept—there are no cows to be contained, just apple and pine trees. He does not believe in walls for the sake of walls. The neighbour resorts to an old adage: “Good fences make good neighbours.”
The speaker remains unconvinced and mischievously presses the neighbour to look beyond the old-fashioned folly of such reasoning.
His neighbour will not be swayed. The speaker envisions his neighbour as a holdover from a justifiably outmoded era, a living example of a dark-age mentality. But the neighbour simply repeats the adag.
State the key poetic devices Frost utilised in Mending Wall
Frost doesn’t utilise complex language + instead utilises blank verse + iambic pentameter to create flowing elements if mimicking flowing thought + consciousness.
There are no stanza breaks, obvious end-rhymes, or rhyming patterns.
- Allusion to Sisyphean (greek mythology)
- Assonance
- Epanalepsis
- Enjambement
The final line ends with Repetition of the line;
“Good neighbours make good fences”
What is Frosts Stopping I the woods on a snowy evening centred around?
On the surface, this poem is simplicity itself. The speaker is stopping by some woods on a snowy evening.
He or she takes in the lovely scene in near-silence, is tempted to stay longer, but acknowledges the pull of obligations and the considerable distance yet to be travelled before he or she can rest for the night.
However the poem’s language makes it seem almost too soft + gentle, Frost is hesitant with his descriptors which creates an unsettling element to the poem.
State the key poetic devices Frost utilises in ‘Stopping I the woods on a snowy evening’
The structure is consistent the entirety of the poem;
- 4 stanzas all ending in full stops + pauses perhaps of reflection.
- Has the AABA pattern known as ‘Rubaiyat chai’ form rhyme which means everything’s interlocked, a classical form of rhyme.
- Written in iambic tetrameter with 4 blocks of unstressed, stressed syllables giving the poem + underlying unnatural easiness to it.
- Enjambement
- Punctuation ie commons which change the emanating of lines for effect
- Symbolism
- Repetition
Final lines end with repetition signifying stream of contiousness + drifting.
What is Frosts ‘Out Out’ centred around?
It is published during WW1 + centred around the destruction at the hands of technology.
Its set in rural Vermont, where a young boy cutting wood with a buzz saw is called in for “supper” by his sister. But just as he turns to come in, the saw suddenly makes contact with his hand, causing an outpouring of blood that ultimately proves fatal.
This tragedy, a young boy losing his life in such a wasteful and shocking way, implicitly questions the value of life itself. Indeed, the narrator’s matter-of-fact presentation of the boy’s final moments, and the way in which everyone soon goes back to their daily business, suggests that death is a mundane fact of daily life.
The fact its written in WW1 reflects the tragic nature of war + its consequences, losses of precious life occurred consistently in vast number, this is just one individual but ehres millions. It’s an unnecessary wastage of life + human beings’ unconditional worth.
State the key poetic devices Frost utilises within Out Out
- The title has connotations/ links to Shakespeare’s Macbeth + thus immediately gives the reader a sense that the poems concerning the ending or meaning of life itself or perhaps its meaningless.
- Lacks form, it possesses no rythm or rhyming which makes it feel random adding a sense of shock.
- Repetition
- Personification
- Personification + humanisation of the saw
- Harsh + abrupt vocabulary
- Foreshadowing
- Allusion
What is Frosts ‘Mowing’ centred around?
Ostensibly, the speaker muses about the sound a scythe makes mowing hay in a field by a forest, and what this sound might signify.
He rejects the idea that it speaks of something dreamlike or supernatural, concluding that reality of the work itself is rewarding enough, and the speaker need not call on fanciful inventions.
There’s an abundance of nature embedded throughout the poem ie animals, weather, the elements, colours etc its very sensory.
